Former Boeing pilot says FAA official called him 'scapegoat' for crashes

A former chief technical pilot for Boeing charged with fraud for deceiving federal regulators evaluating the company's 737 MAX jet says a FAA official called him a "scapegoat" for two fatal crashes. Lawyers for Mark Forkner said the FAA official with personal knowledge of the 737-MAX contacted the government and said Forkner "is a 'scapegoat' and should 'not be charged.'" The court filing on Monday did not disclose the official's name. Boeing did not respond to a request for comment. The FAA did not immediately comment. The U.S. Attorney's Office in Northern Texas, where the case is being heard, declined to comment. The filing also included parts of a PowerPoint from an unnamed FAA employee that defense lawyers said contain new disclosures about a key system known as MCAS that should have been disclosed by Boeing’s engineering team. The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is a software feature designed to automatically push the airplane’s nose down in certain conditions. It was tied to two crashes of the 737 MAX in Indonesia and Ethiopia over a five-month period in 2018 and 2019 that killed 346 people and led to the FAA's grounding the plane for 20 months, an action lifted in November 2020. The filing said Boeing engineers did not disclose key details of MCAS to Forkner or the FAA - including that MCAS could activate when it was not intended after a single faulty sensor. The PowerPoint said the 737 MAX crashes "were caused by a failure of the engineering processes" and argued the focus on training and the Forkner criminal charges "is not only incorrect and misguided, it is detracting from the real lessons." Excerpts of the presentation made public said it was to address a "potential miscarriage of justice."<br/>